FL insurers are filing rate DECREASES (Citizens -8.8%). Anyone else watching?

Question

I have been digging through Florida insurance rate filings lately, the ones carriers submit to the state before rates change. A few recent ones surprised me, because everyone assumes FL insurance only goes up:

Citizens -8.8% (homeowners multiperil, effective 2026-07-01, approved)

Florida Peninsula -8.4%

Security First -8.0%

These get filed with the state months before they hit your renewal, so you can see the direction coming pretty early.

For those of you buying or holding in FL right now, how do you handle insurance when you underwrite a deal? Do you just pull a fresh quote each time, or do you track carrier filings at all? Genuinely curious what people actually do.

David Najera · Answer

Filing tracker is a genuinely useful habit and I hadn't been doing it — thank you for the specifics.

One caution from someone underwriting Florida for the first time, so take it as a question rather than a correction: an approved statewide average decrease and what lands on a specific renewal are different numbers. The filing is an average across a book that spans 67 counties and every construction year. A block-and-truss house in a coastal county with a current wind mitigation report and a 2% hurricane deductible is not moving with that average, and the territorial relativities inside the filing can run opposite to the headline.

So my working approach is to pull a real quote on the actual address before the inspection period closes, and separately to ask what the hurricane deductible is as a percentage of Coverage A — because that number changes the reserve I need far more than the premium does. The premium is an operating expense. The deductible is a capital event.

What I'd like to hear from people already holding: did the filings you tracked actually show up on your renewal, or did roof-age and mitigation-credit changes absorb the decrease?

Amber Stout · Answer

I'm  using a mix depending on the deal. HELOCs have been great for quick access to capital, especially when there’s a clear plan to pay them back. I’m also doing a DSCR cash out refi right now to pull equity out of a rental without tying the loan to my personal income.

I don’t think there’s one best option. I look at cost of capital, monthly cash flow, how quickly I need the money, and most importantly what the exit/payback plan is. Having multiple financing options available is really the key.

Hikaru Yamagishi · Answer

That's a genuinely interesting thing to be building. The part about brokers earning it by actually monitoring and shopping, instead of spamming, is exactly what I'd want as a buyer too.

What I've been messing with sits a little earlier in the timeline. Before someone even buys, I try to give them a rough read on what insurance is likely to cost and whether it's a dealbreaker, using county property data plus the rate filings carriers put in with the state. Those filings show up a few months before they actually hit renewals, so you can see the direction before it lands. It's more of a "should I even pursue this deal" signal than a quote.

Feels like we're looking at the same thing from different ends of the timeline, so I've been reading your posts with interest. Looking forward to seeing what you ship.

Eric Augustyn · Answer

I usually only do it at renewal, or if I am frustrated with the performance of a broker and I am looking to switch.  One of our goals with what we are building at BiggerPockets is to have insurance brokers try to win your business by actually monitoring and shopping rates.  We are working on ways to do that where it is performance over spam.  Knowing your level of risk and quoting the higher deductible although they may make less, etc.  More to come.

Hikaru Yamagishi · Answer

Yeah, re-shopping it every renewal feels like the only real move right now with how much is moving. Good call on the Citizens and flood point too, that part never shows up when people just compare the headline premium. The decreases I'm tracking are almost all on the private side, which is probably why private is closing the gap with Citizens for you. Out of curiosity, do you have your brokers re-quote on a set schedule, or only when a renewal looks off?

Eric Augustyn · Answer

I try to have my insurance brokers shop around for existing properties and pull fresh quotes when underwriting.  Very interesting on the rate change for Florida, good to see.  I have found Citizens is a bit higher than private, but they now also require flood which changes the equation a bit.

Hikaru Yamagishi · Answer

The source is the state's filing system, irfssearch.floir.gov. I pull from it with a tool I built that puts the current FL property filings on one board, refreshed daily: carrier, product line, filed and closed dates, and status (approved, pending, withdrawn). It's the "Filing activity" tab here: https://insurance.scoring.global

It doesn't show the actual percentage. That number only lives in the filing PDF, and the state gates those behind a captcha-and-email request, so I left it out rather than fake it. What you get is who filed, on what line, and where it stands, without digging through the portal each time.

Your framing is how I use it too. Direction and timing as a leading indicator. The bound quote still decides the real number. Still hoping someone holding on the coast can say whether the filed direction actually landed on their renewal.

Ecaterina Katerina Morosan · Answer

This thread is great. I just did a quick research, and it shows 8% cut for homeowners and 12% cut for condo owners.

Hikaru Yamagishi · Answer

Nice, thanks for adding that. It lines up with what's been filed. One thing worth flagging for anyone reading: those are statewide averages, and condo/association lines get filed separately from a single homeowner policy, so the number that actually lands on one unit can come in above or below the headline. The direction shows up early, the exact figure still lands at renewal.

David Najera · Answer

Happy to take you up on that, Hikaru — where you're pulling the filings would be useful to bookmark alongside my own address-level quote pulls.

On your question back to me: I'm still pre-close, so I don't have a renewal history to report yet. The way I'm underwriting it for now is to treat the filed direction as a leading indicator on trend, not a substitute for a bound quote — if the direction turns out to be too optimistic once roof age and mitigation credits are factored in, I'd rather find that out at underwriting than at renewal.

If anyone reading this does have a coastal renewal history to share, that data point would settle it for all of us.

FL insurers are filing rate DECREASES (Citizens -8.8%). Anyone else watching?

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